This invention relates to apparatus for decoying wild avian game. More specifically, the invention comprises apparatus for luring wild turkeys, with a decoy, to a desired site as a part of a wild turkey hunt.
There are six subspecies of wild turkeys on the North American Continent with the most populous being an Eastern Wild Turkey which has a range covering the entire eastern half of the United States and into Canada. This subspecies was encountered by the Puritans, the founders of Jamestown and the Acadians. The Eastern Wild Turkey is a relatively large and is the most heavily hunted wild turkey subspecies.
Wild turkeys are omnivorous, foraging on the ground or climbing shrubs and small trees to feed. Males can reach thirty pounds and despite this weight are agile fliers and cunning—unlike domestic turkey counterparts. Wild turkey habitat is often an open woodland or savanna where they can fly under the top of trees. Eastern Wild Turkeys eat hard mast such as acorns, nuts, seeds and berries roots and insects. Occasionally wild turkeys have been known to consume amphibians and small reptiles such as lizards and snakes.
Wild turkeys are very cautious birds with excellent eyesight and will fly or run at the first sight of danger. The combination of excellent eye sight and a cunning, but cautious, disposition make wild turkey hunting in the United States a particularly rewarding experience when done properly. Wild turkeys are usually hunted with shotguns but occasionally are taken by skillful use of bow and arrow gear. Bow hunting wild turkeys, however, is virtually impossible without an equally skillful understanding of deployment and sophisticated utilization of decoys.
Depending on state regulations wild turkeys are usually hunted in the spring and fall. The spring is mating season and male turkeys are hunted while fall hunts are often focus on both male and female. Wild male turkeys “toms” are polygamous—mating with as many hens as possible. Males may be seen courting in groups with a dominant male puffing out its feathers, spreading its tale and dragging its wings to attract females. In nature once a dominant tom flies down in the early morning, gobbles and struts hens will be attracted. The theory of courting in groups is that a dominant male is able to attract enough females such that less dominate males then have a greater chance of sharing their genetic material than if they were courting alone.
It has been determined through experiment and experience that decoy hunting wild turkeys, although very challenging, can be reliably successful. The concept is to create a decoy in sound and movement that is attractive to a target of interest. In this if a tom decoy is used and movement and sound is skillfully employed hens, jakes (young males) and other toms can be attracted within hunting range notwithstanding the excellent sight and flight tendency of wild turkeys—as noted above.
Although calling wild turkeys by imitating male gobbling, clucks, putts, purrs, yelps, cuts, whines, cackles and kee-kees by hunters in camouflage gear has produced a degree of successful results this process has obvious limitations of human skill and patience.
In addition numerous stationary hen, jake and tom decoys have been envisioned in the past mounted upon stakes that are driven into or positioned upon a ground surface (viz. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,965,953; 5,036,614; 5,168,649; 5,233,780; 5,274,942; 5,289,654; 5,459,958; 5,515,637; 6,070,356; 6,092,322 and US 2001/0004812). Although such decoys are often provided with head turning, body rocking, rotating or oscillating motion, which is some instances is remotely controlled, wild turkey eyesight and natural caution makes stationary decoys of limited practical effectiveness.
In addition wild turkey decoys have been suspended from tree limbs in mobile arrangements (U.S. Pat. No. 5,832,649) relying on wind currents to impart random movement. Although relatively inexpensive and easily mounted such designs also lack a significant degree of realism that impairs their utility.
At least two other wild turkey decoy designs have included radio frequency controlled body motion functions as well as a degree of ambulatory movement—one with a linear track way (U.S. Pat. No. 6,408,558) and another with a wheeled carriage (U.S. Pat. No. 6,708,440) that is driven by a drive pulley. A linear track tends to be somewhat unnatural because in nature few wild turkeys walk back and forth in a straight line. A wheeled carriage design provides an opportunity for varied motion but as a practical matter a wheeled carriage is of limited utility in natural wild turkey habitat where the ground surface is rarely even and often covered with clump grass and/or weeds that will impede normal wheeled movement.
It would be highly desirable to provide a wild turkey decoy apparatus that would be realistic and variable with an ability to accommodate daily hunting circumstances, terrain and recently observed tendencies of wild turkeys. Moreover it would be desirable to provide a decoy apparatus that is highly rugged and practical to operate over a season of hunting in varied terrain conditions, temperature and adverse weather circumstances.
The problems and desires suggested in the preceding regarding wild turkey hunting with man-made decoys are not intended to be exhaustive but rather are among many which may tend to reduce the effectiveness and reliability of wild turkey decoy hunting techniques and systems appearing in the past. Other noteworthy problems may also exist; however, those presented above should be sufficient to demonstrate that successful wild turkey hunting known in the past, using man-made decoys, will admit to worthwhile improvement.